Vernon Edwards’s new piece in The Nash & Cibinic Report examines whether the recent spate of government contracting reforms will improve anything or create more chaos. He notes that the recent executive order consolidating the procurement of common goods with GSA is a throwback to the 1940s notion of centralized procurement embodied by the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949. He is also skeptical about OMB’s rumored rewrite of the FAR, wondering whether a FAR 2.0 will result in a more efficient acquisitions process. An addendum to the article from Ralph Nash himself is more blunt. Nash says these two policies—consolidated procurement, FAR 2.0—”are bad policies that will seriously damage the procurement system.”
It is also unclear if the State Department will retain USAID’s Acquisition and Assistance Corps. The field-based COs were USAID’s competitive advantage in national security. Missions with technical staff, a CO, and a Finance Office had the ability to quickly develop a program of activities in response to a global emergency, contract for it, and make timely payments. No other agency or government had this capacity to respond in this manner, in mobilizing the capacity of the development and humanitarian relief organizations. This is lost without a dedicated acquisition workforce.
